We took off for Beijing on Saturday, April 7. We got the pretty plane - Sasha was psyched!
The air in Beijing is FOUL. We hit pea soup when we were miles away from landing. More on this later. If you've ever experienced air pollution in a major American city, that doesn't even come CLOSE to the magnitude of air in Beijing. It's unbelieveable.
We toured China with The China Travel Company. They were amazing! The most stressful part of any vacation is trying to figure out logistics and we didn't have to do any of that. They went back and forth with me for months to plan a trip that was perfectly customized just for us. Then once we hit China every time we got off a plane or other transit vehicle there was someone waiting with a sign that said "Stolasz Family" and they just whisked us out the doors and into a van and we were off! In Beijing we had Kimmy.
Kimmy and our driver took us straight to our hotel. It was very cool - right in the middle of the old part of Beijing. The neighborhoods here are called "hutongs". It's these very bleak, utilitarian streets and alleyways that open up into beautiful courtyards once you get inside them. Our hotel had bamboo gardens, lots of fish ponds, and these really excellent round doors.
The main courtyard of the hotel.
Now most people touring China have to use this first afternoon to try to get centered after a major time jump but since we didn't experience a time change we were ready to go! We headed out to explore. Here's a typical hutong alleyway from the street. Doesn't look like there's much going on down there does it?
We found the old Bell and Drum towers and there were bicycle rickshaws all lined up waiting for customers.
The drum tower. Or it actually might be the bell tower. I forget.
Walking back into our hotel courtyard from the alley.
We heard that the thing to eat in Beijing is duck. Ever hear of "Peking Duck"? That's the ticket. Peking = Beijing mispronounced and misspelled. Kimmy and Driver came back for us and arranged our whole dinner. We didn't even have to order! After that we headed home and hit the sack because we had a big day ahead of us.
We were supposed to meet Kimmy at 9am but we finished breakfast around 7:45. We headed back out into old Beijing and then took a bike rickshaw back to our hotel. How many Team Stolasz members can you fit in a rickshaw? All of them!
Our first stop was a tour of the Forbidden City. Back in the day the Emperor lived here with about a million concubines and wives and guards and servants. If a commoner entered the F.C. they were executed. It's an actual city inside those walls behind us. It goes on forever and we explored inside for more than 2 hours!
Once you're inside the gates there are several impressive courtyards one after another:
As you go from one area of the city to the next there are stairs up to the next building and then back down to the next courtyard. In the middle of every stairway is an amazing stone carving. This is where the Emperor went up. He never walked anywhere you see, he was carried over the carved stone areas by servants who hoisted his chair and used the stairs on either side. What a life...
We hit a 4 star bathroom so we had to use it. 4 Stars means there will be TP and soap and it will only smell a little bit like an animal shelter. So you can imagine what 1 and 2 stars get's ya. Yikes.
Then we learned one of our favorite things about old Chinese buildings. There are little carved animals on the corners of the buildings and the number of them tells you how important the building was. This bathroom structure only gets a 3 creature rating. Pretty low....
A 5 creature building. Whenever I learn about something like this I can't help but imagine a room full of Chinese architects from long ago sitting in a room somewhere having massive arguments about whether to put 5 or 6 creatures on some structure. You know it happened...
We wove our way through 4-5 massive open areas, and then hit the living quarters which were really interesting and went on and on. Then toward the back of the city we found the gardens. What a beautiful area!
These 2 trees are called "the lovers" or something because they grew together into one tree. Awww....
All the flowers were in bloom and we had a really amazing day. The sky was clear and blue - no dye involved!
Chinese culture time. From beautiful gardens and flowers we move onto our next topic. Split Pants. This is something that rural Chinese people put on their babies and toddlers instead of diapers. They make and sell pants that are just split up the crotch. When the kid has to go (yes, 1 OR 2) they just squat and go. Really. We saw these all over China and unfortunately I was unable to get any pics or vid of the pants in action. Dagnabbit!
A beautiful and rather empty section of the F.C.
The best building in the whole complex and the only one to get the coveted 10 creature rating. That's bonafide! All the buildings had names like "pavillion of eternal serenity" or "palace of beautiful virtues". And there were a million of 'em. So I have no idea what this one was called but I'm sure it's got some pretty high falutin' title considering all those animals up there.
After lunch we headed to a big local park. As it was a Sunday there were tons of locals out recreating and enjoying the weather. We saw people doing Tai Chi, fan dancing, swing dancing, singing, you name it.
And we got the first glimpse of this! Look familiar?
We headed off with our kite to find an open place to fly it. The problem was that it was dead calm. There was no wind at ALL.
We had to get ice cream instead. Then we headed up to see the Temple of Heaven. The real thing is a lot bigger than the Epcot version. It's filled with exquisite things and famous Chinese proverbs.
When we were up high at the Temple we noticed that there was actually a breeze. We figured we could get the kite in the air up in the Temple grounds. Kimmy didn't think this was such a hot idea so we had to introduce him to the ancient American proverb: "Easier to beg forgiveness than ask permisson." We got it up. We're good like that.
After some kite flying we headed out the huge roadway moat type thingy toward the gates and walls of the Temple. By this time we had walked miles and the kids were ready for a break.
We headed into a tea shop and it was pretty cool because 1.) She gave all of us our own dish of peanuts and she wasn't stingy with 'em either. We loves nuts. 2.) We got to try a whole bunch of different teas which worked out good for her because then we bought some.
Our tea presenter was super-cute. She kept trying to up-sell us but we were saving our $$ for Tibet.
Next we had time before dinner so Kimmy took us for a tour of a silk factory. They showed us how silk is made from either single bug pods or double bug pods and it was FASCINATING. Then they tried to sell us stuff but we stood strong. So we got a free silk tour and walked out unscathed.
Learning about silk made from single bug pods.
One little bug inside.
The whole set-up. The egg lookin' things at the bottom are the silk cocoons. They get about 10 of them, wind their super-fine strands together, and then unwind the 10 pods at the same time to make one strong thread of silk.
These ladies are pulling double bug pods into sheets. So with the single bugs you get a thread and with the double bug pods you get a sheet. It was really cool. I think the chick on the far side needs a nap though.
Then we had dinner. The less said about that the better. Kimmy gets a A++ for Duck Dinner #1, but night 2's restaurant was NAS-TY. And it smelled like pee. But that was kind of an on-going theme in China. We have a strong suspicion that this has something to do with the split-pants. As we headed off to our final event of the day we passed this famous Beijing building:
Then we saw the Beijing acrobats! The show was amazing... every bit as good as La Nouba at WDW and that's saying something. After the show you can believe we were ready for bed! We had packed a whole lot of China into our first day!
